Honey is a sweet substance produced by honey bees from the sugary secretions of plants, primarily nectar. This creation serves as the colony’s long-term food source, providing concentrated energy for the hive when foraging is not possible. The transformation from watery nectar to the stable, golden product involves a sophisticated biological and physical process performed by worker bees.
Foraging for Nectar
The honey-making process begins with the worker bee foraging for nectar, a sugary fluid secreted by flowers to attract pollinators. Nectar is a carbohydrate source required by the bees for energy to power their flight muscles and generate heat within the colony. Using a specialized mouthpart called a proboscis, the bee sucks the nectar from the flower’s nectaries.
The collected fluid is temporarily stored in the honey crop, or “honey stomach,” which is separate from the bee’s digestive stomach. A single forager may visit hundreds of individual blooms to fill this crop before returning to the colony. Back at the hive, the forager bee regurgitates the collected nectar and transfers it to a younger indoor worker bee through trophallaxis, a mouth-to-mouth exchange.
The Bee’s Chemical Transformation
Once inside the hive, the nectar undergoes a significant chemical alteration initiated by the worker bees. During the transfer process, the receiving bees introduce enzymes, primarily invertase, secreted from their hypopharyngeal glands. Invertase acts on the nectar’s main complex sugar, sucrose, breaking it down into the simpler sugars glucose and fructose.
This enzymatic hydrolysis is a foundational step that makes the substance more digestible for the bees and permanently changes its chemical structure. Other enzymes, such as glucose oxidase, are also introduced, which contribute to the final honey’s characteristic acidity through the formation of gluconic acid. The partially processed, high-moisture liquid is then passed repeatedly from bee to bee, continuing the trophallaxis process.
This repeated regurgitation and exchange ensures the nectar is thoroughly mixed with the necessary enzymes and begins the physical reduction of water content. Worker bees deposit the liquid into open honeycomb cells and then use rapid wing fanning to create powerful air currents within the hive. This constant air movement promotes the evaporation of excess water, steadily decreasing the moisture level from the original 70–80 percent found in fresh nectar.
Curing, Capping, and Collection
The long-term stability of honey depends on the final stage of moisture reduction, referred to as ‘curing.’ Evaporation ceases when the moisture content drops below 18 percent. This low water activity level prevents spoilage by inhibiting the growth of yeast and microorganisms, allowing the honey to be stored indefinitely as the colony’s food supply.
If the moisture content remains too high, the honey is susceptible to fermentation. When the house bees determine the honey has reached this cured state, they seal the cell with a thin layer of fresh beeswax called a capping. This wax seal creates an airtight barrier, protecting the finished product from absorbing moisture from the humid hive environment.
Human harvesting begins by removing these wax cappings from the frames using a specialized tool. The uncapped frames are then placed inside a honey extractor, a machine that utilizes centrifugal force. Spinning the frames flings the dense liquid honey out of the open cells and onto the walls of the drum. This method allows the honey to be collected without destroying the wax comb, which the bees can quickly repair and reuse. The raw honey is then strained to remove any small particles of wax or debris before being packaged.